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Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. R. v. Antic, 2017 SCC 27

[1] The right not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause is an essential element of an enlightened criminal justice system. It entrenches the effect of the presumption of innocence at the pre-trial stage of the criminal trial process and safeguards the liberty of accused persons. This case requires the Court to clarify important aspects of the law of bail, specifically, when a judge or a justice of the peace can impose a cash deposit on an accused as a condition of release.

[2] At issue are the interpretation and the constitutionality of s. 515(2)(e) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46, which authorizes one form of pre-trial release. Section 515(2)(e) permits a judge or a justice to require both a cash deposit and surety supervision[1] as conditions of release if an accused ordinarily resides out of the province or more than 200 km away from the place in which he or she is in custody. But this form of combined “cash-plus-surety” release is not available to accused persons who do not meet these geographic criteria.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Marin v Office of the Ombudsman, 2017 ONSC 3333

[1] The Defendant the Legislative Assembly of Ontario (the “Assembly”) seeks costs on a partial indemnity scale of its successful motion to have the Plaintiff’s action as against it dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The Defendant The Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario (the “Ombudsman”) seeks costs on a partial indemnity scale of its successful motion to have the Plaintiff’s statement of claim struck out on the ground that it discloses no reasonable cause of action.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Saadati v. Moorhead, 2017 SCC 28

[2] This Court has, however, never required claimants to show a recognizable psychiatric illness as a precondition to recovery for mental injury. Nor, in my view, would it be desirable for it to do so now. Just as recovery for physical injury is not, as a matter of law, conditioned upon a claimant adducing expert diagnostic evidence in support, recovery for mental injury does not require proof of a recognizable psychiatric illness. This and other mechanisms by which some courts have historically sought to control recovery for mental injury are, in my respectful view, premised upon dubious perceptions of psychiatry and of mental illness in general, which Canadian tort law should repudiate. Further, the elements of the cause of action of negligence, together with the threshold stated by this Court in Mustapha v. Culligan of Canada Ltd., 2008 SCC 27 (CanLII), [2008] 2 S.C.R. 114, at para. 9, for proving mental injury, furnish a sufficiently robust array of protections against unworthy claims. I therefore conclude that a finding of legally compensable mental injury need not rest, in whole or in part, on the claimant proving a recognized psychiatric illness. It follows that I would allow the appeal and restore the trial judge’s award.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Drolet-Savoie c. Tribunal des professions, 2017 QCCA 842

[10] Le pourvoi soulève principalement la question des limites apportées à la liberté d’expression d’un avocat eu égard à ses obligations déontologiques, « le tout considéré à travers le double prisme de l’appel et de la révision judiciaire »[6]. L’arrêt Doré c. Barreau du Québec[7] (« Doré ») limite-t-il la liberté d’expression de l’avocat aux seuls cas où celui‑ci s’exprime avec vitupération comme le plaide l’appelante, ou énonce-t-il un cadre plus restrictif en raison des obligations déontologiques de son auteur?

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.

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